On this night in 1973, MASH revisited a theme it first explored in the Christmas season of 1972 — a letter from Hawkeye to his father updating him on the activities at the 4077th.
"Dear Dad ... Again" followed the same format as its predecessor, but it did it a little better the second time around.
Take Hawkeye's update on Klinger (Jamie Farr), for example. Klinger had taken to wearing a white wedding dress.
Hawkeye was complimentary. "It's easy to go overboard with one of those things," he told Klinger, "but that's tasteful without being gaudy."
He did have some constructive criticism for Klinger, though.
"You must wear a slip! With the sun behind you, I can see clear through to your shorts."
Hawkeye began working on a letter to his father out of sheer boredom, and he claimed he wasn't the only one in camp who was bored and complacent. He made a bet with Trapper (Wayne Rogers) that he could walk into the mess hall naked, and no one would notice.
He lost that bet, and as he was leaving, he encountered Klinger, who said, "Now that's tasteful without being gaudy!"
Frank (Larry Linville) and Hot Lips (Loretta Swit) had a falling out, and a despondent Frank returned to the Swamp with a rare request. He wanted a drink from Hawkeye and Trapper's still. Then, while under the influence, he confessed to them that his brother had called him Ferret Face when they were younger.
Late arrivals to the MASH series probably heard folks at the 4077th calling him Ferret Face in subsequent seasons, but they most likely thought it originated in the camp — unless they saw the first–season episode in syndicated reruns.
Radar (Gary Burghoff) became a high school graduate via a correspondence course. He had to verify his final grades before receiving his diploma so he tried to sneak them past Henry (McLean Stevenson) along with other documents Henry had to sign. It didn't work; Henry insisted that the grades that were reported had to be legitimate.
Sometimes Henry's conversations with Radar were worth the price of admission. In this episode, they were pure gold. When Henry asked Radar about the document, Radar told him the contents were restricted.
"You can tell me," Henry replied. "It's got my name on it."
The primary story centered on a Capt. Casey (Alex Henteloff), a new member of the medical staff who was a superb surgeon. Everyone was wowed by the things he did in the O.R. — until Hawkeye learned through Radar that Capt. Casey wasn't really a surgeon. He was an impostor.
Casey told Hawkeye he had done other things — such as practicing law and working as an engineer — that required specialized training, but he had never had the patience to do things by the numbers. Hawkeye promised to report him to the authorities if he ever caught Casey practicing medicine without the proper credentials — and insisted that Casey (whose real name turned out to be Schwartz) look him up the minute he got those credentials. "You're a damn fine surgeon," he said.
What most people probably did not know at the time the episode was first broadcast — and what most people probably still do not know — is that the character was based on a real impostor from the Korean War era — a fellow named Ferdinand Waldo Demara.
Demara pretended to be many things — among them an engineer, a prison warden, a monk, a teacher, a cancer researcher. He also masqueraded as a Canadian war ship's surgeon and operated on 16 people during the Korean War.
The character in the MASH episode was based on Demara, but it wasn't the first time his life story was fictionalized like that. In 1960 the movie "The Great Impostor" was based on Demara's exploits and starred Tony Curtis in the title role.
